Internet Entrepreneurs Blog

Over the past year or so I’ve gotten many questions about how I built Singletracks.com. It appears that Singletracks is a modified forum program that allows users to register, post new topics (trails), and reviews (posts) of trails. Of course there are lots of add on features like wishlists, recommendations, etc. but at the core the site largely uses features associated with messageboard systems.

In fact Singletracks has been built almost entirely from scratch. The very first version of the site that allowed users to post their own trails was actually constructed using a Perl script for allowing users to create custom homepages. The concept has survived but all the scripts have been completely rewritten using PHP and MySQL. If I were to build the site all over again I would probably start with a messageboard script package to get the main functionality necessary to run the site.

One problem with using a messageboard application is the fact that it is tough to find a really basic bare bones set of scripts that doesn’t have alot of fancy bells and whistles. In fact, since messageboards are not exactly analagous to an information review system, you’ll find yourself making extensive modifications to get things organized and doing what you need them to do. Plus the templating schemes these days have gotten out of hand and you need to be up on the latest technology just to understand how they work (Smarty, BBCode, etc.).

The solution I’ve come up with is a set of PHP scripts and MySQL tables I’m calling the Information Review System (IRS). I’ve been using it myself for a couple of months to post some of my own review sites and it appears to get the job done. The basic scripts let you collect user information (name, email) and build user accounts that can then be used to post new information and reviews. The setup I’ve posted is organized geographically by default but one could definitely switch the country/state categories for other product categories (like media/genre for example). The owner of the script can also modify or delete listings easily using a simple web interface. Finally, the templating scheme is simple: an include file for the header and an include file for the footer. You can change these files all you want to “plop” the forms and outputs into any page format you like.

I’ll be working on adding more features to these scripts over the next several months and I welcome any feedback. Enjoy.

So I just sold half of my shares of Apple, taking a nice 500% gain while the market is hot. I bought most of my shares just after Sept. 11, 2001 and have been fortunate to ride the whole iPod wave. I’m a dedicated Apple user and I bought my first iPod soon after the initial release of the version 1 product.

Today Apple announced the mobile iPod version which looks pretty cheesy in my opinion. Of course, I also hated the original iMac when it first came out (but then decided it was cool) and I’m usually not a good judge of the success of Apple products. Anyway, the Motorola phone just doesn’t look right to me; it doesn’t even have the standard Apple iPod font on the screen, making it look just like a Dell DJ or any other system. Essentially you’re buying the iPod “software” on a phone, you would think it would look like the original version that Apple puts on its own iPods! But the cell phone market is HUGE, much bigger than the MP3 player market will ever be, and this is a great opportunity to grow marketshare for Apple’s device.

The iPod Nano looks amazing, almost like it’s from the distant future! This definitely isn’t something I’d be interested in (my music library is currently close to 20GB!) but I drool over it nonetheless. Seems like a winner, can’t wait until you can upgrade the software to play video

In the end, this seems like a nice local maximum (like my use of Calculus?) in the stock price and I’m happy to have gotten out at $49.10 a share. I’m still bullish on the stock but definitely glad to take some gains while I’m in school and my income is low (gotta minimize those taxes ya know!).